Home Recording's Dirty Little Secret

[Walter Tore]

I went into the home recording concept with the hope of someday making recordings that would sound good to my ears. I have been at it for almost 4 years and I am beginning feel good about the results. I spend an average of 25 hours a week at it. It is like playing an instrument. You can take it as far as you want and you need a good one to get there. I have also learned that buying decent gear is the way to go. Walter
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=71994638

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Oh yeah I'm quite aware of the whole British deal, with them being more accepted of 'black' blues than the American audience. That's probably why the British Invasion worked....great music played by people that the biggots would accept! Learned that from a college class no doubt

Learned that *long* before college, myself, but that's only because I was immersed in the music early on.

It's not so much that the British were more "open" to black music as it was that's a majority of what they had to listen to. It's really all (like so much these days in so many parts of our lives) has it's roots in World War II and Amrican/Allied Armed Forces Radio, while modern stalwarts like the BBC were either not broadcasting because of air raid blackouts or broadcasting more important things like news of the war.

The whole mentioning of Purple and Crimson as being underground is irrelevant to the time, but to now. I know Purple were HUGE, from 1973-1976 they were the highest selling popular group in the world. But go to your average young musician/engineer around my age and Deep Purple all of a sudden becomes underground, save for one overplayed/overrated song (Smoke on the Water, which has suffered from the "Stairway effect" for me). Crimson is pretty niche, you might have someone only vaguely aware of their debut album as you mentioned (which I just got for Christmas, haven't listened to it yet) but I would still consider them niche in the prog-head realm.

That really illustrates my point, SF. I never really wanted to go off on a tangent about the merits of either the Beatles or Elvis, but rather how the great majority of equally great music is lying just under a very thin surface of dust, but the perception seems to be that this stuff is just plain unaccessible or non-existent simply because it's not part of the Jack Radio rotation. King Crimson and Deep Purple have gone "undergournd" in the course of a single generation. Why? It's not because the music has disappeared or become hard to get - it's just a Pandora recommendation or Amazon or iTunes or any of a million other music mining sites away. It's because - except for "Hush" and "SOTW" - it's not being served into our fat laps on a silver plate by radio anymore.

That's not Clear Channel's fault; they're out to make money, not educate our musical palate. That's our fault for not being willing to get on out there and find it ourselves. And I'm not just talking about the old stuff, though there's an entire planet of that stuff waiting to be re-discovered. I'm talking contemporary productions as well. I mentioned that Hawaiian site earlier. There are sites from all over the world - including the continental US as well - that have lot's of great new stuff in every genre there is that's not Clear Channel or Jack Radio material and often enough not even smashed to pancakes by a producer aiming for 14 year old ears.

I know you've mentioned a bunch of times you disgust at people who think Sgt. Pepper's is the greatest engineering feat of all time.

You have somewhat misunderstood me there, SF. I agree that the SgtPep album deserves mush of the accolades it gets, and have on a couple of occasions here acknowledged it's seminal importance in the march of music history. What bugs me is the seeming belief that SgtPep appeared out of a vacuum, that it is the *only* album ever of it's type and level of quality (or even the misundertsnading that it was the first), and how the seemingly over-intense focus on SgtPepper has blinded so many folks to the rest of the planetary music catalog out there. It's like, you just want to say after a while, "Enough already! My god, there are a thousand SgtPeppers out there, why do you guys keep talking about just the one?" It would be like if the only movie that existed or that anyone ever talked about was "Citizen Kane" and nobody ever even watched or heard of "Casablanca", "Lawrence of Arabia" or any other of the bona fide pieces of classic cinema, let alone the great, quirky ones.

G.

 

[MCI2424]

Learned that *long* before college, myself, but that's only because I was immersed in the music early on.

It's not so much that the British were more "open" to black music as it was that's a majority of what they had to listen to. It's really all (like so much these days in so many parts of our lives) has it's roots in World War II and Amrican/Allied Armed Forces Radio, while modern stalwarts like the BBC were either not broadcasting because of air raid blackouts or broadcasting more important things like news of the war.That really illustrates my point, SF. I never really wanted to go off on a tangent about the merits of either the Beatles or Elvis, but rather how the great majority of equally great music is lying just under a very thin surface of dust, but the perception seems to be that this stuff is just plain unaccessible or non-existent simply because it's not part of the Jack Radio rotation. King Crimson and Deep Purple have gone "undergournd" in the course of a single generation. Why? It's not because the music has disappeared or become hard to get - it's just a Pandora recommendation or Amazon or iTunes or any of a million other music mining sites away. It's because - except for "Hush" and "SOTW" - it's not being served into our fat laps on a silver plate by radio anymore.

That's not Clear Channel's fault; they're out to make money, not educate our musical palate. That's our fault for not being willing to get on out there and find it ourselves. And I'm not just talking about the old stuff, though there's an entire planet of that stuff waiting to be re-discovered. I'm talking contemporary productions as well. I mentioned that Hawaiian site earlier. There are sites from all over the world - including the continental US as well - that have lot's of great new stuff in every genre there is that's not Clear Channel or Jack Radio material and often enough not even smashed to pancakes by a producer aiming for 14 year old ears.You have somewhat misunderstood me there, SF. I agree that the SgtPep album deserves mush of the accolades it gets, and have on a couple of occasions here acknowledged it's seminal importance in the march of music history. What bugs me is the seeming belief that SgtPep appeared out of a vacuum, that it is the *only* album ever of it's type and level of quality (or even the misundertsnading that it was the first), and how the seemingly over-intense focus on SgtPepper has blinded so many folks to the rest of the planetary music catalog out there. It's like, you just want to say after a while, "Enough already! My god, there are a thousand SgtPeppers out there, why do you guys keep talking about just the one?" It would be like if the only movie that existed or that anyone ever talked about was "Citizen Kane" and nobody ever even watched or heard of "Casablanca", "Lawrence of Arabia" or any other of the bona fide pieces of classic cinema, let alone the great, quirky ones.

G.

Sgt Peppers singlehandedly inspired all albums produced in the 70s. In it's day, that album came so close to the Beachboys quitting music entirely.

100 years from now, our century will be remembered for the Beatles and very few other bands. Elvis will die with his fans. King Crimson is long gone. Who else is there really?

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Sgt Peppers singlehandedly inspired all albums produced in the 70s.

Or so goes the legend. But let's not mistake legend for reality, history for the past.

Sure, SP was a great album, an important album and a seminal album, I never disagreed with that. But it's not as if the entire history of recorded music passed through that one album like freeway traffic through a toll booth. History is simply not that simple or that linear. There are so many simultaneous, interweaving and incestuous threads in the genealogy of 20th century music, that such attribution is silly.

SP was a milestone, a signpost, the penultimate poster child representing a benchmark, for sure. But it was also an evolution, a result of what was already happening in music. Had (God forbid) The Beatles and George Martin died in a plane crash, there still would have been Pet Sounds and Quadraphenia, there still would have been theatrical concept albums, there still would have been novel marriages of rock and orchestration, there still wopuld have been someone getting high, throwing tape clips up in the air and re-editing them back together randomly just to see what would happen, etc. This stuff was all already more or less in the genealogical oven by the mid 60s, and it was only a matter of short time before someone else like a Brian Wilson or an Alan Parsons or even an Ian Anderson or a Rick Wakeman would have claimed the honor. Sure, the Beatles were indeed good enough and smart enough and industrious enough to be there and to grab that brass ring first, but it wasn't by divine incarnation.

The truth is that the majority of the albums produced in the 70s, and since then, would have existed in pretty much the exact same form or with only minor differences if SP never happened.

It's much like the Einstein legend and the whole Relativity thing. Contrary to legend, Einstein's Relativity wasn't a bolt out of the blue back in the early 1900s, a way of thinking that caught everybody else off guard. The fact is that Einstein had built upon groundwork already laid previously by other physicists. Hey, he was the first to make a couple of mental links and connections, and managed to build himself a legend in the press who (like they did with the Beatles) seemed to be as much taken with his hair and his irreverence as they were with his work. But had he just stayed in the Patent Office and not published those papers, one of his contemporaries would have come to the same conclusions and equations soon enough, because that's where the stream of science was flowing.

Sometimes the only difference between superstar genius and competent also-ran comes down to being in the right place at the right time as much as anything else.

100 years from now, our century will be remembered for the Beatles and very few other bands. Elvis will die with his fans. King Crimson is long gone. Who else is there really?

Wow. Nothing like leaving out the first two-thirds of the century as if it never existed, or ignoring the innovators and fathers of 20th century American music which laid the entire musical foundation upon which the Beatles built their castle, and without whom the mopheads would be working the docs of Liverpool instead of the dives of Germany. How about Scott Joplin, George and Ira Gershwin, Robert Johnson (The Beatles only sang about the Crossroads, he was there), Woody Guthrie, Duke Ellington, Chuck Berry, Hank Williams Sr. or Bob Dylan, just to name a few off the top of my head? Or how about the pioneers that produced and recorded them and actually brough them to our ears; Alan Lomax, Sam Phillips, Estelle Axton, Alan Freed, Phil and Leonard Chess, Barry Gordy, etc.

Let's not forget the reply from the aliens when they found the Pioneer 10 disc. They said "Send More Chick Berry", not "Send More Fab Four"

G.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

Their songwriting is top notch (the whole ripping off ordeal....everybody does that anyway), their melodies are amazing, their harmonies beautiful.

I guess it's worth mentioning Douglas Adams here, in one of the later Hitchiker's Guide books, where he refers to a melody as sounding "like something George Harrison wrote one day, before pausing and spending the afternoon contemplating which part of Westminister County he'd buy with the royalties" or something to that effect.

Just tongue-in-cheek enough to be appropriate.

Myself, I always preferred the Stones to the Beatles; a band that only really came into their own when they stopped trying to sound like the Beatles. I'll take Beggar's Banquet over anything the Beatles recorded, IMO.

 

[Seafroggys]

Ah, glad you mentioned Quadrophenia, a great sounding album (not to mention great innovative songwriting on Townshend's part).

And The Beatles didn't do Crossroads...that was Cream. Robert Johnson is, quite simply, the man.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

And The Beatles didn't do Crossroads...that was Cream. Robert Johnson is, quite simply, the man.

I was talking more generally, not an album recording of the specific song; there's hardly a rock band from the 60s that doesn't allude to or tip the ol' hat to the Crossroads mythology at some point in their catalog. And I wouldn't be surprised if the moptops performed "Crossroad Blues" live at the Cavern Club or elsewhere early in their career. Hell, so many of those bands did at one point or another. Clapton may have been the first to record it for a new generation, but everybody was playing it or writing about it in one way or another, at least until Charlie Daniels killed it off in the 70s by turning the theme into novelty rock.

G.

 

[Seafroggys]

Yeah you're probably right. I finally heard the original a few weeks ago, even through the crummy recording of the day it still kicked with cajones.

 

[ElectricBlu]

I started out wanting to record myself because a band I was in went in to record a bunch of music for a real album and it sucked!

AND WE PAID $100 PER HOUR!!!!!

So, I got into it and I suppose I have a pretty decked out recording studio but still... lots of people can do a good job for a small amount of money!

Cheers to Home and Professional Recordists everywhere!!!

Julien
Recording Engineer @
The Electric Blu Studio
www.electricblustudio.com

 

[acl1966]

First off, I am new to this forum.

But I found many of these comments to be very interesting.

First about recording, when I was in a band back in the late 1980's, I got a job at a local Austin recording studio, the pay was pretty dismal. You made what you earned, but the real perk was full access during down time. I was able to work with Richard Mullen (Stevie Ray Vaughn), Walter New, and Chet Himes. Walter was about my age, but has gone to grab a few grammy nominations for his work in the 1990's. Chet Himes who worked in LA during the 70's and moved to austin to "clean up" the lifestyle.

I never truly believed fully the arguement that equipment is necessary, but he would tell me that George Martin did it with nothing and his work is still pretty good. (More on that later). The studio we worked at was an old 2" 16 channel rig, and 24 track was the standard, but time and time again they would tell me they could do on 16 what idiots would waste on 24. I will say that Stevie Ray Vaughn, Joe Ely, Omar and the Howlers, and Eric Johnson all put out very good sounding projects from our studio. I never believed for a minute that these guys could do the same at my home studio. I setup my home studio 6 years ago and fully believed that I would be recording sublevel products and a lot of it was and is.

The one thing that I can say is the secret is capturing the best sound possible. This can be done anywhere with very little setup especially with most of the sound coming from sound cards. I have a VERY simple setup, I have Yamaha XG card, Roland GS-55, and an Echo Darla24 card. I migrated to Sonar 3.1 about three years ago from XGworks (see I wasn't lying). I found that I was able to produce some decent stuff, but it was time consuming. I take audio wave files and process each independently through steinberg's wavelab and then place it back into the mix. Is it uber professional, no. But quality vs. $$$ investment is totally cool. I just wish I had more patience, to really put in more time and I as I keep learning and remembering I am getting closer and closer.

Oh well just wanted to comment on that.

And I will add this: The Beatles brought so much more to the world than blues. You really need to sit down and listen to their work as it was created and see the evolution of their talents and songs. The picked up where Buddy Holly left off and yes someone would have done it. As far as comparing them to other bands, I always start at the weakest efforts and in this they are definitely superior to the Stones.

 

[Sailjunkie]

A lot of it depends...

on what kind of music you are doing. The more complex the music, the more of a challenge it is to get great recordings. If you overdub 5 guitars, synths, bass, vocals and ping pong them all onto a few tracks, it will all sound like shit. I started out 20 years ago with a 4 track portastudio, and though I've "graduated" to an 8 track digital, I'm still trying to keep it as simple as possible. I don't do DAW as I've never been very good with computers. I like the simplicity of the Tascam DP02 and can get half way decent recordings, but then again, I'm a home recordist...this is a hobby. I have no aspirations of being the next Prince (he he). Recently, I've thought about moving up to a 2488 or Yamaha AW 1600, but I've really got all I need for what I want to do. I just can't justify the extra cost.

 

[doulos24]

I didn't care about the quality so I picked 2

I started home recording for the purpose of learning to play guitar lead There were no fancy backing tracks then, no acid loops so I had a dual rca tape deck and a 5 dollar radio shack mic and I was 14. i would of never guessed the first time i hit record on that darn rca tape deck that it would change my life forever but it did since then I've worked in some of the best recording studos with the best producers doing what I love to do

 

[John Henry]

I started recording to get the original music and covers down that I was writing and playing.It's a heavy mix of blues and rock and I wanted to send discs to bars to see if they would have us play. As you know, musicians come and go so once the song is recorded it is easily transferred to another player the way it sounds best. I also really like the recording process ,probably more as a player than actually turning the knobs but i do what I have to do as I don't have the dough to set out to a pro studio.. Either way, it is fun. I'm in the middle of recording my band for the second time in a few years so it's like learning all over again. I have the guitar amp in the shower stall the bass amp out in the garage inside a SUV and the harmonica amps on the floor with a cheap mxl condenser mic in front of a old fender champ and a sonny jr. custom the drums are in the main room. Only difference is now I have this website to consult. Thanks to all of you posting here, your a tremendous help. John Henry

Here is a link to the myspace where the old tunes (covers) are I am currently working on new ones .This was my first attempt at recording a few years ago.

notchhouse is the address on myspace sorry haven't posted enough so you have to cut and paste it.

 

[SEDstar]

....

I got into the whole home music thing quite by accident. I used to be a drummer, and as a 30-something didnt mind killing time with young musicians I found around town. (I used to be a drummer when young).

I'm "the classic geek" I suppose, and they were amazed I would take a soldering iron to a naughty switch, replace a power supply filter cap to reduce noise, etc. I didnt know what "multitracking" really WAS, but... they wanted me to figure out how one person could learn to play different parts of "freebird", they knew some kid who would record one part, then play along to learn the othr part(s).

Once I had their software and computer DOING that, I started "stealing" recordings her and there, trying to learn basic mixing, if even in a rough way. The only kid remotely serious let me "track him" with 2 covers and his original song first with acoustic guitar thru cheap condenser, then he sang over it for track #2

a couple HUNDRED "mixes" and dozens of "attempts", I finally came up with a sort of 3 song demo for him... 2 covers and his original. Did it sound like a commercial recording? No... but it was pleasant to listen to enough, that he landed a "gig" as a singer in a local band, and that was years ago. SInging is hs "day job" and they gig around the small towns for money.

I always hoped he would "make it" one day... as I will have his "early demos" on computer and CD, I always remind him... LMAO.

Was kinda neat one day working in the yard, and heard some festival or another down on the other side of town... I clearly heard "his original song" in the distance, and knew I mixed it and got him his start and he's usd singing to pay for a house, wife, 2 or 3 kids, etc etc.

*shrugs*

Now, I just use the computer to learn basic compositional skills.

I alwayas said "No... I DONT think we can accomplish anything commercial sunding at home... but I DO thnk we can mak a freakin' demo, if you guys will quit with this "you gotta hear us live, man" and "we like to jam, dude" stuff !!

that one kid "now a local singer" was the only one that saw any benefit from trying to multitrack at home to make a demo.



I have heard people spend a couple hundred bux in the big city to th north, and get a really great "practically commercial sound" CD for them... i have ALSO heard a diff. band get complete "shite" for like a couple GRAND in a different studio, same city.

you dont always get what you pay for, I dunno.

I just learned the "rank basics" for basically fun (I'm a HAM, if that makes it make any sense...lol) and now I am learning composing on my own at home, for equal fun.

*shrugs*

you can make a pretty cool demo at home, if you read a lot, ask a lot of questions, and have a fair sized forehead. A hobby background in electronics prolly didnt hurt any either.

once you start getting into any "serious money though", you do need to watch where you go, and how much money you spend, though... IMHO.

i didnt realize I had picked up any "ears", until about a year ago, I heard Ozzy on the radio, and went "why does my stero sound like crap all of a sudden??? loose wires? what th---", and realized it wasnt my MP3, LMAO, it was "the radio", he hee.

th dang thing was "signal all the way on", way over compressed. (the digital signal meter lites were ALL the way up, all thruy th song... even my 128 bit MP3 recording of it has a LITTLE bit of swing...

I smiled and felt good about myself, I mean, I dont know MUCH, but I know SOMEthing now, 4 years later... LMAO

 

[Jeff_B]

it seems that i've always done "home recording" on one level or another...
...(and to a greater degree of quality all the time).


cheers,
wade

i think this mostly explains my situation.
my older brother went to columbia in chicago, majored in sound recording. so i had his toys to tinker with early on. it started with acoustic guitar and singing.. then came very basic drum tracks. now i have got my own gear and am recording electric full band stuff. what keeps me going is that every song or idea i record i try to make sound better than the one before it...

 

[G-Jay]

I didn't start with recordings in mind. The point for me was to learn about sound engineering. I started with a dynamic mic straight into a soundblaster card and moved up to a condenser through an external pre-amp. I found people to record and I recorded my own efforts.

Now I regularly record bands with a multi track recorder, a bunch of sm57s a di box and a couple of condensers. I get results that I am happy with and bands are happy with.

If you take a good player with a good instrument into a great sounding room you already have a pro standard recording - if your careful about mic placement. The biggest fault in a lot of home recordings isn't a lack of Neuman mics or Neve pres but the lack of a large treated space to record in. A drum kit in a bedroom is never going to sound 'pro'

The next biggest discovery has been how simple yet difficult mixing is. I'm still working on this one alot but I'm getting there.

 

[CANVASWING]

My band would record our stuff back in the early 80's with good ol' reel to reels and tons of other gear($$$$)! It would take us about 4 days to produce a quality 3 minute song. Too much damn work! When good affordable digital recorders became available, I decided to take another crack at it. Much to my amazement, I could produce a 3 minute number all by myself, with minimal gear and have it sound not half bad out of the box! The best part is that it can be done relatively quickly! This site is answering some old questions I've had.
One can never learn too much.

 

[Mull]

I began thinking I could make pro sounding recordings. I have a very basic set up. Korg Karma work station, pre amp, in mixer, out mixer, condenser mic, Cubase LE and 24/ 96 sound card. I've listened to different types of music over a long period of time. Up until the mid 90's or so, pro records weren't that high of quality. The quality of recording has to do with what you're trying to record and how much time you want to put into it. It also has to do with the signal before it hits the DAW or whatever you're recording with. While it may not be possible to completely get that sparkling studio sound, I'm finding if you put enough patience and care into mixing and experimenting, you can get decently close. If I can do it with my little ghetto rig, I'm sure with some higher quality mics and pre amps, I could come even closer. I'd say the most important thing to good recording is having the ear for music. I'm no expert though. I'm just a beginner.

While I don't have a very nice set up, the actual instruments I use are pretty nice. Aside from the Korg, I record with an Ibanez RG 7 string, ESP (not LTD) Viper, Yamaha 5 string Bass, Rogue acoustic (hey it sounds nice), and old Boogie head with a JCM 800 cab.

 

[frisco]

actually im satisfied with the quality of my recordings. they sound nearly flawless, especially after i started messing around with the waves mercury bundle

 

[Seafroggys]

^^^ Haha care to post samples?